Worst Hostage Crises

Worst Hostage Crises

A special bus carries six terrorists and 41 hostages, among them 11 oil ministers from OPEC, to the Vienna airport, Dec. 22, 1975. At left, terrorist, presumably "Carlos", a Venezuelan. The six terrorists who had taken over the OPEC headquarters and held 41 people hostage drove to the airport and boarded a DC9 aircraft they had commanded to fly them to Algeria.

Bernhard Frye/AP Photo

Worst Hostage Crises

A special bus carries six terrorists and 41 hostages, among them 11 oil ministers from OPEC, to the Vienna airport, Dec. 22, 1975. At left, terrorist, presumably "Carlos", a Venezuelan. The six terrorists who had taken over the OPEC headquarters and held 41 people hostage drove to the airport and boarded a DC9 aircraft they had commanded to fly them to Algeria.

Bernhard Frye/AP Photo

Worst Hostage Crises

Crowds lift the squadron leader of the rescue planes on its return to Israel. On June 27, 1976, an Air France plane flying from Tel Aviv to Paris was hijacked. The plane landed in Uganda and the passengers were held hostage at the Entebbe airport. On July 4, while the world watched the U.S. celebrate its 200th anniversary, Israeli commandos flew to Entebbe and rescued 100 hostages.

Corbis

Worst Hostage Crises

A terrorist, right, talks to the Minister of Interior Hans-Dietrich Genscher, 3rd from left, and other officials, on Sept. 5, 1962, at the Israeli team accommodation in the Olympic village of the Munich Summer Olympics. Terrorists of the group Black September had attacked the Israeli accommodation in the Olympic village, killed two Israelis and took nine hostages in the morning of Sept. 5, 1972.

dpa/Corbis

Worst Hostage Crises

An armed police officer, in a sweat suit, in position on 5, Sept. 1972, in the Olympic village in Munich. In the night of Sept. 6, 1972, the rescue operation at the military airport fails. All nine hostages, five terrorists, and a Munich police officer lost their lives during the operation.

dpa/Corbis

Worst Hostage Crises

French police storm the Air France Airbus A300, which was hijacked by four Algerian terrorists with the GIA (Group Islamic Army), at Marseilles Marignane Airport and liberate the hostages, Dec. 25, 1994. All four terrorists were killed.

EPA

Worst Hostage Crises

Iranian demonstrators perched atop of the United States Embassy wall in Tehran, burn an American flag, the fourth American flag to be burned since the students seized the embassy and more than 50 hostages on Nov. 4, 1979.

Corbis

Worst Hostage Crises

An American hostage is paraded before the cameras by his Iranian captors. In 1979, over 50 American hostages were taken from the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and released after 444 days.

MPI/Getty Images

Worst Hostage Crises

Iranian students prepare for a press conference during the Hostage Crisis, decorating the room with anti-American slogans and propaganda against the former Iranian Shah. On January 20, 1981 the 52 American hostages were released by Iran into U.S. custody, having spent 444 days in captivity.

Henri Bureau/Sygma/Corbis

Worst Hostage Crises

Soldiers and security forces are seen in front of the burning school during the rescue operation in Beslan, northern Ossetia on Sept. 3, 2004, two-days after hostage-takers demanding Russian withdrawal from Chechnya seized over 1,000 people in the school.

Yuri Tutov/AFP/Getty Images

Worst Hostage Crises

A man carries a wounded girl from School Number One as Russian special forces enter the building in Beslan, North Ossetia, Sep. 3, 2004. The Beslan school hostage crisis began when a group of armed Chechen separatists and Islamic fundamentalists took more than 1,200 children and adults hostage in Beslan. More than 330 people died, among them more than 180 children.

EPA

Worst Hostage Crises

Worst Hostage Crises

Freed Colombia hostage Ingrid Betancourt, third from left, holds the hands of her children Melanie and Lorenzo Delloye, on their reunion after Betancourt's six years of captivity with the FARC, at the airport in Bogota, Colombia on July, 3, 2008. Colombian commandos tricked rebels into putting the 15 hostages onto two helicopters, allegedly to go see the top rebel commander.

Inaldo Perez/AFP/Getty Images

Worst Hostage Crises

Members of the Chechen rebel group and their leader Movsar Barayev, center, speak to journalists inside the theatre building captured by them in Moscow, Oct. 25, 2002. On Oct. 23, Chechen rebels stormed the Moscow theater during a performance demanding that Moscow withdraw troops from war-torn Chechnya. Chechen women sat among the hostages with explosives strapped to their bodies, officials said.

NTV/AFP/Getty Images

Worst Hostage Crises

Special forces soldiers carry out hostages during the storming of the theatre building captured by Chechen terrorists, Oct. 26, 2002, after the three-day stand off which left 117 hostages and 50 Chechen militants dead. More than 750 hostages were saved.

Anton Denisov/AFP/Getty Images

Worst Hostage Crises

Hostages are evacuated in a bus from the Moscow theatre, Oct. 26, 2002. Thirty-six Chechen rebels were killed when security forces entered the building with gunfire and sleeping gas.